October 1st, 2004

Cartoonizing Photos With The GIMP

GIMP, Photos, by Donncha.

This is fun! After reading this tutorial on making cartoons from photos I tried to emulate his technique in the GIMP. The dialogs are slightly different but here’s what I did..

  • Layer->Duplicate Layer
  • Select the new layer, Filters->Edge-Detect->Edge, select Sobel, Amount should be 2.0, and Black should be checked.
  • Invert the edge-mask layer, it’s in Layers->Colors->Invert
  • Back in the Layers Dialog, change the Layer Mode to Divide

Play around with Layer mode settings, desaturate the top layer, blur or otherwise mess up the bottom layer. Endless fun can be had! Feel free to post links to your own creations in the comments below!

Later.. on advice I got rid of the portrait, I’ll upload another tomorrow!

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Responses to “Cartoonizing Photos With The GIMP”

  1. heh, that’s very cool, wonder what it looks like when you try it with people / animals?

  2. Good question, I added a portrait – it was originally b/w but it came out well I thought! I didn’t invert the edge-mask this time though.

  3. This can get addictive! Completely agree with you on that! :-)

  4. how do you set the layer mode to “divide”?

  5. There’s a big “Mode” drop down box at the top of the layers dialog. Select the “divide” option :)

  6. aaagh – i see it. i had the layer dock turned off.

    Dialogs -> Create New Dock -> Layers Channels & Paths

  7. you have used dodge layer mode not divide

  8. I have try it, but couldnt do any similar version

  9. That’s amazing… I’ve been looking for something like that and it actually works. Well, I’m using the “Grain merge” mode instead of “Divide” because it works the best for me.
    Thank you.

  10. This is a life saver…!

  11. by Layers > Colors > Invert

    you mean Filters > Colors > Value Invert??

  12. well here are my steps

    Layer > Duplicate Layer

    Filter > Edge-Detect > Edge…

    Filter > Colors > Value Invert

    Layers > Mode > Value

  13. dago, it’s supposed to be layer > colors > invert, not filter > colors > value invert.

  14. Yeah.. looks good. The instructions dont follow the new Gimp layout, so… lol, thats why there are some people saying that the instructions aren’t exactly accurate.

    This has a nice effect, btw, and its really hard to come by a good comic book / cartoon effect on the Gimp whereas its pretty simple on Photoshop..

  15. I tried your tutorial on a photo of people .On my own photograph actually .But it doesnt look goodz . :-( My goal is to imitate the result of Cartoonized service ( http://cartoonized.net/cartoonme.php ) .More or less like the samples displayed on that page .
    Anyone can help me ?

  16. Great thing, looks good. I’ve used multiplication instead, becomes more dark.

  17. Thank you so much!!!

    In my case I’ve found that I like more to leave in ‘normal’ the layer mode that you recommended to set on ‘divide’, it looks more sketchy.

    After that I duplicate again the original background, I place it on top of the inverted edge-mask layer and set the layer mode to HARD LIGHT.

    With this short tutorial you just open some new dimension to me.

    Cheers.

    studio-catastrofe at November 29, 2008 12:01 am
  18. I found a very detailed tutorial on cartooning a photograph. http://cartoonized.net/tutorial-turning-photograph-into-cartoon-part1.php
    It is for adobe photoshop.
    Would someone please ‘translate’ that tutorial into Gimp? I’d be very glad if you could. I needed very much to turn my picture into cartoon but I can only use gimp.

  19. I can’t follow the instruction Layers->Colors->Invert
    I do not have the colors after layers so I can’t do Invert

    Might be missing something, using gimp 2.6.1

  20. Awesome tutorial!

    Try using a Selective Gaussian Blur (Filter-Blur-Selective Gauassian Blur) after and/or Cartoon (Filter-Artistic-Cartoon.

    Also might want to mess with giving it an Unsharp Mask (Filter-Enhance-Unsharp Mask!

    Cool!

  21. The first post was made 5 years ago, GIMP has change since then!

  22. sometimes screwing around with posterize and van gough and then the “cartoon” filter gets a real good product

    trust me
    mess around with filters and posterize, fellow cartooners

    keenefilmproductions at January 8, 2010 2:38 am
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